Finance from a business perspective

- Finance is an important part of any business. After all, finance deals with money, and without good money management, a business will fail. Finance is where strategic decisions can ensure success or where problems can become risks that threaten the ability of a company to stay in business. In other words, if things go bad in finance, the entire company will suffer. Meeting financial obligations, making payments, analyzing risks, and contributing to important discussions are just some of the ways that finance professionals support a business's opportunities to grow, to build and to succeed. In order to make sure that a business has the greatest chance of success, there are several critical ways that business leaders can support the buildup of the financial function within your organization. One, build teams with finance capabilities, because you need the right people working together to be successful. In your company's finance function, you need stability, coverage, but also room for financial professionals to run, to implement new and innovative ways to help your company grow. But in the finance function, you also need guardrails. Number two, be able to value financial trade-offs. As in any decision, it's impossible to do everything at once and no matter what you're investing in or where you're spending your money, you need to be able to evaluate those most critical trade-offs. Number three, develop and deploy tactical responses to realtime risks and opportunities. There's a critical need to manage the day to day financials of a company, including the risks and opportunities. This includes managing financial market risks, as well as operational risks. And number four, create and implement longterm strategies to increase the value, profitability, and growth of your company. To make the best strategic decisions, leaders across the organization need to work closely with finance leaders. Finance professionals in an organization need to be doing a lot more than just balancing the books day to day. They also need to be looking far out into the future, making sure that your organization has longevity potential and room to grow. Even if you aren't in the finance function of your organization, you need to know that leaders in finance are living the motto trust but verify. After all, people make mistakes, poor choices, or sometimes engage in fraudulent activity. This is why in finance functions at for-profit and not for-profit organizations, I've always pushed for as much transparency as possible so that we can identify where the expenses are, what the finances look like, that we can agree on them, that we can monitor them, and so we can improve them for the future. This means that even if finance doesn't seem like it's part of your job, it's still part of your job. As a business leader in your organization, the best thing you can do to help ensure financial success of that organization is make sure that the right people are in the right functions and that they understand what the most important trade-offs are in the short term and in the long run.